Month: February 2016

One of the most inspiring keynotes at Unity’s AR/VR Vision Summit was by Alex McDowell on world building and storytelling. Alex was production designer for Minority Report, Fight Club, & Lawnmower Man, and so he’s been creating imaginal worlds for many years. Alex argues that the process of building worlds can inform and inspire stories,…

Mirroring the ‘Oculus Ready PC’ program, HTC is now working with PC hardware partners to offer ‘Vive Optimized PCs’. The initial set of systems come from HP, Alienware, and MSI. ‘Vive Optimized PCs‘ are “fully Vive-compatible right out of the box featuring jaw-dropping graphic capabilities and breathtaking audio output for a superior VR experience,” according…

McDonald’s Sweden is launching a promotion that invites kids to turn Happy Meal boxes into virtual-reality viewers. Dubbed Happy Goggles, some 3,500 of them will be made available at 14 restaurants over the weekends of March 5 and March 12. The price is about $4.10. The push is tied to the Swedish “Sportlov” recreational holiday, during…

Today is the day that the long-awaited HTC Vive becomes available for pre-order online. By going to the product’s web page, interested customers can reserve their unit for the device’s April 5 ship date. Demand for these high-end (and relatively expensive) headsets is something of a question mark for the VR industry. The Vive costs around…

The HTC Vive VR headset is now available for pre-order from HTC’s website. We tell you where you what it is, where you can buy it and how much you can expect to pay. The HTC Vive is now up for pre-order, and is due to begin shipping on April 5th. Priced at $799US (exc. taxes)…

Natural motion input is the clear future of VR. And while the Rift would seem to lead in price over the Vive, factoring the controllers into the equation will create a very narrow price gap, if any, between the two systems. While Oculus has its Touch motion controllers in development, they won’t be ready by…

HTC today confirmed worldwide pricing for the SteamVR powered Vive VR headset, due to go up for pre-order tomorrow (29th Feb). They also announced that those pre-orders would receive Google’s virtual reality, paint application Tilt Brush in addition to the two announced pack-in titles Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption. Google’s Tilt Brush, originally developed by…

The HTC Vive VR system is due to go up for pre-order tomorrow (29th February) and we know the US launch price is going to be $799. But what can the rest of the world expect to pay for the new Valve engineered, SteamVR system? A reported leak from HTC’s own website appears to reveal…

Samsung has been doing a lot of promotional work for the Gear VR head-mounted display (HMD) since the consumer launch last November. The most recent was at its Unpacked event for the Mobile World Congress 2016 this week, where every attendee had a headset to watch the unveiling of the Galaxy S7 smartphone in virtual…

Whether you’re an experienced designer, programmer, engineer, or maybe you’ve just been inspired after reading VRFocus articles – either way, you have stumbled across VRFocus’ job hub. The jobs listed here are located worldwide, from major game players to humble indie developers – the one thing they all have in common is that they are…

Developers Stress Level Zero, the team behind the HTC Vive shooter Hover Junkers, are known for their VR experiments. But their latest investigation pushes the theoretical limits of Valve’s Lighthouse tracking system, as featured in the HTC Vive. Using just two battery-powered Vive laser base stations the Stress Level Zero team set up a warehouse-scale…

If you’ve made up your mind and you’re going to buy the HTC Vive it’s time to get your credit card ready because pre-orders for the $800 room-scale VR system start at 7 a.m. PST on Feb. 29. It’ll ship beginning April 5. HTC also officially revealed international pricing for the system and announced that,…

Of all the titles that Oculus VR has helped promote for its upcoming Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD), Vox Machinae may be the one that’s flying lowest under the radar. Very little has been seen of this upcoming mech battling multiplayer title but, this week, developer Space Bullet has finally unveiled a…

Among the improvements to come to the latest version of the Vive is a feature that will maximize the device’s field of view between users and be a boon to glasses wearers. While the Vive development kit had an IPD adjustment—allowing users to change the distance between the lenses—the Vive Pre (and consumer Vive, which is essentially…

Samsung had big news to share last week as the electronics giant finally announced the next edition in its flagship line of smartphones in the Galaxy S7 and its curved companion, the Galaxy S7 edge. Gear VR, the company’s virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD), played a big part of the reveal, as those at…

Last month VRFocus reported on the announcement of Giant Cop, a brand new virtual reality (VR) videogame from Other Ocean. Little is known about this intriguing project just yet, as the developer revealed the title over on Reddit and noted that the official website for it is yet to update to make mention of the…

2016 has already started off as an exciting year for smartphone-based VR. Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR have been around for a while now and are starting to get large marketing pushes from their creators. I still think we’re in the early stages of this technology and wanted to discuss where I think mobile…

Casey Neistat has over 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube. The young phenom is known for his vlog, adventure, and DIY videos. Neistat’s videos are about bringing his viewers along with him on an experience, and tomorrow that experience will be the red carpet of the 88th Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Neistat’s Oscars video will…

XEODesign‘s Nicole Lazarro has been researching emotional reactions of gamers in VR to discover the unique properties of the medium. You can’t just port a 2D game into VR and expect it to work, and so she’s calling for design leadership in the field in order to create experiences that use the strengths of the…

Horror titles can be very effective in virtual reality (VR) due to the immersive nature of the technology. Developer White Door Games released a demo version of its suspense laden videogame Dreadhalls a while ago, not long after the first iteration of the Oculus Rift DK1. The first full version of Dreadhalls arrived last year…

This week finally marked the launch of SUPERHOT, a long-anticipated first-person shooter (FPS) that ran a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign all the way back in 2014, raising some $250,798 USD in the process. The title can currently be picked up on Steam for £16.19 GBP. The version available now doesn’t support virtual reality (VR) technology, but…

Samsung’s Gear VR head-mounted display (HMD) has a wealth of 360-degree videos to view. Some are available through apps like Jaunt VR and Littlstar while others are standalone experiences by their creators. While a lot of the films cover a broad range of genres, romantic themes aren’t as abundant. This week though A+E Networks has…

PlayStation VR fans will probably remember the virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display’s (HMD’s) showing at the 2015 PlayStation Experience fan event in San Francisco late last year. Several new videogames were announced for the kit at the show, including the likes of Rez Infinite and Ace Combat 7. Creator Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) also bravely…

It’s been a while since virtual reality (VR) fans have seen anything new from Chronos, an anticipated adventure title from Gunfire Games. The title was first announced as an Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD) exclusive at Oculus VR’s 2015 pre-E3 press conference, and has been shown at a handful of events since. This month, however,…

Those looking for something new to play on the Gear VR mobile-based virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) this weekend may be in luck. Glu Mobile has put its VR edition of its popular mobile-based hunting series, Deer Hunter VR, on sale for a short period of time. Act fast and you can get the…

The transition from 2D, flat video entertainment to 360 experiences is not going to happen overnight. Institutional changes will have to occur for recording technology, production techniques, script writing, and a myriad of other creative components before we see the change happen on any sort of scale. The bottom line is that it’s going to…

Oculus Sample Framework was released in the Oculus store this week on Gear VR, giving developers and designers an “experimental sandbox” of illustrated solutions to standard VR development problems. Scenes include a menu that lets you customize the speed of fade-to-black during teleportation, crosshair options, real-time head movement on an avatar and more. The Gear VR…

Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia is one of the biggest names in the virtual reality (VR) industry, and PC gaming in general, as consumers utilise their products to get the best videogame performance. The company will be holding its GPU Technology Conference during April at the San Jose Convention Center, in Silicon Valley. The four day…

HTC and Valve are now just a few days away from opening pre-orders for their collaborative head-mounted display (HMD), the HTC Vive. Consumers will be able to place their orders on Monday 29th February, with a retail price of $799 USD for the headset. And recently HTC has been commenting on the successful partnership between…

During the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 this week in Barcelona, Spain, South Korean wireless telecommunications company SK Telecom, together with Nokia has been showcasing its latest 5G system. The companies have been giving live demonstrations of the 20.5 Gbps transmission speed to attending delegates. Last October the companies achieved a 19.1Gbps transmission speed over the…